Switzerland: Europe’s Art Hub

By Richard C. Morais

Jean Dubuffet, the French painter and sculptor, called the works that inspired him art brut, or raw art. That was his nomenclature for the art—cries of the soul, really—coming from untrained artists in insane asylums and prisons. Dubuffet’s obsession with the works created by these outcasts of society ­resulted in a 4,000-piece art collection, which he donated in 1971 to the city of Lausanne, Switzerland.

On a recent Sunday, I ambled with my family up to the Collection de l’Art Brut Lausanne. It was one of the most disturbing, fascinating, and provocative collections I have ever come across. It included, for example, the works of Aloïse Corbaz, a Swiss governess at the court of Wilhelm II in Potsdam. Poor, deluded Aloïse fantasized a romance with the German emperor, until World War I drove her back home to Lausanne; a wave of religious mania in 1918 got her locked up in a local insane asylum.

Aloise Corbaz secretly painted such works while in an insane asylum, an example of the art brut found in a Lausanne museum. Credit: Camera Press/Redux

While institutionalized, Aloïse worked in secret painting her visions with crushed leaves and toothpaste. In Napoléon III à Cherbourg, a startled young woman and a prince seem to court, their colorful figures shattered into cubist-like shards of folkloric art. The work was made with colored pencils and the juice of geraniums, and painted on sheets of paper that Aloïse had sewn together.

Lausanne’s art brut collection provoked a robust debate in our family. Our conclusion: Many of these works were powerful, others obsessive to the point of monotony, but they often crucially lacked that special something that elevates a lowly obsession into something sublime. A great artist does not just dump his inner life onto a canvas, we decided, but instead transforms his compulsions into something divine.

It might not be obvious, but if you want to see world-class contemporary art collections, travel to Switzerland. A granite-solid sense of Helvetian time and history flows, of course, from the heavily subsidized cows on the slopes to the classic lakeside restaurants serving pan-braised pike and perch. All of Switzerland’s tidy order seems to rigidly maintain the status quo.

But against this flows an equally powerful counterculture force, often sublimated by the Swiss into a hot passion for radical, tradition-smashing art. Ever wonder why Basel—the ancient choke point on the Rhine river where France, Germany, and Switzerland meet—is home to the most important contemporary art fair in the world? There’s something in the water here. In 1967, Basel’s burghers voted in favor of the city acquiring two Picassos, for a then-princely sum of six million Swiss francs.

That’s how important ephemeral modern art is to the stolid Swiss, and they also have, rather conveniently, the deep pockets needed to assemble major collections. Those private but publicly accessible collections range from the Beyeler Foundation in Basel to the Bührle Museum in Zurich, but whatever you do, don’t miss Kunsthaus Zürich, the Swiss financial center’s civic collection.

Trudging up Rämistrasse to the museum, we passed the Mai 36 Galerie. The two-room gallery was showing the works of John Baldessari, the American who is considered the father of conceptual art and, for some, one of the world’s greatest living artists. Underneath Baldessari pictures—of a sinking cruise ship, or black children—were ironic menu descriptions such as “Mock Turtle Soup” or “Fennel Ravioli with Scottish Langoustines.” The tiny gallery was hot and stuffy, the stiff Swiss were swilling champagne, and Baldessari himself and his unmistakable white beard were holding court in the back room.

At the Kunsthaus Zürich, meanwhile, the Rothko wasn’t red or blue, but an unusual black; the Warhol was a rare Campbell soup can with a ripped label. I stood excited before a gray 1922 painting by László Moholy-Nagy that foreshadowed his Light-Space Modulator, which launched the “light art” movement in the same year. Every painting in the museum’s small collection is of the highest quality. Afterward, we went by the Cabaret Voltaire , to doff our hat at the bar where dadaism was founded in 1916. That’s when the German deserter, Hugo Ball, and friends like Hans Richter, Hans Arp, and Marcel Jano first met and began performing their protest against the state of the world through absurdist art.

Our closing dinner was at the Kronenhalle, a wood-paneled café founded in the mid-1800s, where musicians and artists sometimes paid their bills with compositions. Today, when you sit down for an oxtail soup or bratwurst, you do so under canvases painted by Chagall, Picasso, and Miró. When I was a boy, the proprietress, Hulda Zumsteg, worked the room in a sweeping white-lace dress, her arthritic fingers ringed by diamonds and grasping the golden head of her ebony cane. I remember so well her visiting every booth and elegantly shaking the hand of each of her customers. Alas, Frau Zumsteg is long gone, but the Kronenhalle’s service is still world-class.

About Penta

Written with Barron’s wit and often contrarian perspective, Penta provides the affluent with advice on how to navigate the world of wealth management, how to make savvy acquisitions ranging from vintage watches to second homes, and how to smartly manage family dynamics.

Richard C. Morais, Penta’s editor, was Forbes magazine’s longest serving foreign correspondent, has won multiple Business Journalist Of The Year Awards, and is the author of two novels: The Hundred-Foot Journey and Buddhaland, Brooklyn. Robert Milburn is Penta’s reporter, both online and for the quarterly magazine. He reviews everything from family office regulations to obscure jazz recordings.